John Calvin

John Calvin, a French humanist and theologian, gave the Reformation its most systematic form and made Geneva a model of Reformed Christianity whose influence reached France, the Netherlands, Scotland, and Puritan England and America.

The Institutes Trained in law and letters, Calvin broke with Rome around 1530 and, a refugee in Basel, published in 1536 the first edition of the [Institutes of the Christian Religion](/christianity/library/books/institutes-christian-religion) — expanded over his life into the great systematic statement of Reformed doctrine. Alongside it he wrote [commentaries](/christianity/commentary) on most of the Bible, prizing the "plain sense" of the text.

Geneva Passing through Geneva in 1536, Calvin was pressed by the reformer Farel to stay. Apart from an exile to Strasbourg (1538–1541), he led the city's church until his death, ordering worship, discipline, and education, and founding the Geneva Academy. Geneva became a haven for Protestant refugees and a training-ground for reformers who carried his teaching abroad — John Knox called it "the most perfect school of Christ."

Sovereignty and predestination Calvin's theology centres on the sovereignty of God and salvation by grace. Reading Paul in Romans 9 and Augustine before him, he taught election and predestination — that God freely chooses whom he saves. The doctrine has been debated ever since, and the later summary known as the "five points" was formulated by his successors at the Synod of Dort, not by Calvin himself; the Catholic tradition and other Protestants dissent from it in various ways. These are differences of tradition, presented not adjudicated.

The Servetus case Calvin's record includes the 1553 execution of Michael Servetus, burned at Geneva for denying the Trinity and infant baptism. Calvin approved the death sentence (though he argued for a less cruel form); the episode is judged by later ages as a grave act of the era's fusion of church and civil power, and is not concealed here.

Legacy Calvin's thought founded the Reformed and Presbyterian traditions and shaped Western ideas of covenant, vocation, and disciplined community. Honoured by Reformed Christians as a second-generation reformer of the first rank, he is assessed critically by Catholic and other traditions — a legacy presented in full, not adjudicated.